Recently, the number of drug-resistant bacteria has been increased. Thus, in order to select an effective antimicrobial drug, it has been really important to check the susceptibility of bacteria or fungi to an antimicrobial drug.
In order to inspect the susceptibility of bacteria and fungi, devices (systems) aimed at simplification and acceleration have been released (Non-Patent Document 1). However, these large systems are expensive. Moreover, in order to determine turbidity, these devices require bacteria to be grown until a resultant culture has a turbidity that can be determined. For example, in the case of bacteria with a low growth rate such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa, it requires 8 hours or more to grow bacteria at the earliest. Furthermore, examples of a method requiring no such device generally include a broth microdilution method, a method in which the MIC (minimum inhibitory concentration) is determined from an inhibitory zone formed in an agar medium after cultivation by a disc with a concentration gradient, and a disc method based on a Kirby-Bauer method (K-B method) (Non-Patent Document 2). However, these methods also require about 18 hours from the initiation of inspection to determination of susceptibility. Thus, further acceleration of the inspection is required.